Head Canons
by RainneCassidy
Summary: In the spirit of Cassie Valentine's "Theoretical Possibilities," I have decided to create a place to share snippets of stories I've written that will probably never be finished. Unless otherwise noted, each chapter is separate from any others.
1. Chapter 1

She double-checked her bulletproof vest and switched off the safety of her gun. Then she looked across the doorway at her partner and nodded once. He reached out from his own place behind the other wall and banged on the door. "NYPD! Open the door, we have a warrant!"

The men with the battering ram stepped forward and slammed it against the door, knocking it open with one blow and then jumping back. She turned smoothly, her gun in front of her, her adrenaline spiking, and stepped forward. "Come out with your hands up, Malcolm! We know you're in there!"

Behind her, she heard her partner following her in, the third member of their team behind him. Guns were out, eyes narrow, blood pumping. She stepped out of the entry hall and into the living room of the apartment. "Malcolm!" she shouted again. "NYPD, come out with your hands up!"

She turned to her left; her partner turned to the right. The door he approached was open; he leaned around it, sweeping the room he found there. "Clear!"

Their other partner stepped around a half-wall and peered into the kitchen. "Clear!"

There was only one way to go, and she went; stepping forward, she kicked the door in front of her open and started into what appeared to be a bedroom. She looked to her right; the window was tightly shut. She turned to her left. Before her was a closet door and what was probably a bathroom door. She gestured toward the bathroom door with her gun.

Her partners, both of them, were right behind her. She stepped forward, gun at the ready, and reached for the door handle.

"_Put it down, Malcolm!_" Ryan's shout made her turn, and she had the sudden, split-second realization as she registered the barrel of the Uzi that she'd been wrong; he'd been in the closet.

She saw his finger tighten on the trigger. She felt her own tighten in response.

The sound of gunfire filled her ears; over it, she clearly heard the sound of the Uzi's rounds penetrating the wall behind her. She knew she was shooting; she knew Esposito and Ryan were shooting as well. She could see the bullet holes opening up in Malcolm's body. The third one was the takedown shot; it penetrated his temple, killing him instantly.

She watched him fall. She stood there for a moment, fighting to catch her breath.

"Oh, holy shit," she heard Esposito say. She turned toward him and realized that both he and Ryan were staring at her in horror.

Ryan was speaking into his radio. "Officer needs medical assistance. Repeat, officer needs medical assistance immediately!"

Esposito was pulling his vest off, his horrified eyes never leaving her. "Ryan!" he was saying. "Give me your shirt!" He was pulling off his own.

Beckett looked down. "Oh," she tried to say, but the sound wouldn't come out.

"Cop-killers," she heard Ryan say as he and Esposito approached her, reaching out with their makeshift bandages to try and stop the blood that was leaking out of the holes in her vest.

There were five holes. She could see all of them. She looked up at Ryan, read the fear in his bright blue eyes. "It doesn't hurt," she said. She could hear sirens in the distance, coming closer.

"Don't try to talk," Esposito said behind her. "Just hold still." He was holding his shirt firmly against her back. The shirt Ryan was holding had been white that morning; now it was crimson against her stomach.

She watched her hand move, saw it rise through the air and land on Ryan's shoulder. Her edges were going dark, and there was a sound in her ears not unlike the sound of the ocean surf striking the shore. "When Castle comes back," she said, and it wasn't easy to speak, but it was too important not to, "you tell him I didn't hold a grudge. Tell him no hard feelings."

"You'll tell him yourself," Esposito snapped from behind her before Ryan could say anything. "The ambulance is downstairs now. So just shut up, 'cause you're gonna tell him yourself."

She squeezed Ryan's shoulder, her eyes locked onto his. "You tell him."

Ryan swallowed hard. "I'll tell him."

She nodded. "Make…" she faltered, felt her legs go weak. The room was getting dark, and her fingers and toes were cold and numb. "Make Esposito go easy on him," she whispered.

"I'll kick his ass all the way back to the freakin' Hamptons," Esposito snarled, just as he had been doing all summer. "You want him to know no hard feelings, you gotta tell him yourself, 'cause I ain't gonna do it."

She stared into Ryan's eyes, demanding that he refute Esposito's words. He merely nodded, not speaking, focusing now on helping Esposito hold her up while he kept his shirt pressed to her stomach. Behind him, she saw the first EMT enter the room. "Thank God," she heard Esposito say. "Hurry, I don't know how much blood she's got left. The son of a bitch was using cop killers."

The world narrowed quite suddenly to a pinpoint of light, and then Kate Beckett saw and heard no more.

For a long time, she didn't know much. There were times when she could hear voices around her, though they weren't usually very clear, and she was pretty sure she was dreaming. Sometimes the voices were of her work family: Ryan, Esposito, Montgomery, Lanie and others from the precinct. Sometimes they were of her biological family: her father, her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Often it was Castle, which was how she knew she was dreaming. He was in the Hamptons with his ex-wife. Alexis's voice, too, had to be a dream; she was in Princeton.

The voices came and went. Mostly they weren't there; mostly she just floated in a soft, warm haze. She remembered being shot; there was no pain, though, so she assumed she must be on some pretty good drugs. She wondered when she would wake up, but she wasn't complaining; when she did wake up, she was probably going to be pretty miserable, so she didn't mind if she stayed asleep.

The dreams came and went. Sometimes they were good; the voices she heard were calm and friendly. Other times they were not so good, when the voices were worried or sad or frightened. They were just dreams, though. She floated.

And then, quite suddenly, it was time to wake up. She was still floating, but she was moving closer to consciousness. There was a slow, growing awareness of sounds around her – people talking, machines beeping, rattles and squeaks and the occasional ring of a telephone. She became aware of her own body; she could feel herself breathing, the light pressure of a sheet across her body, the touch of air on her skin. She wasn't sure how long she remained in that state, still asleep but growing more aware, but when she realized that the darkness she had been surrounded by was giving way to light outside her eyelids, she knew that she was awake.

She opened her eyes.

* * *

The ceiling above her head was made of plain white acoustic tiles. She stared at it for a very long time, working her mind around it, before she realized what it was and was able to put a name to it. She blinked slowly, letting the world come slowly into focus. There was no drug haze, for which she was grateful, but there was also no pain, and that was probably a bad sign. She rolled her eyes to the right and studied the machinery which stood there; she recognized the heart monitor, of course, and the IV stand that was slowly dripping some sort of fluid into her arm.

She watched the heart monitor for a long time before realizing that it wasn't turned on; it was merely standing in the corner. That, she thought, was probably odd. She considered that oddity for a long moment. Then a sound caught her attention – the sound of paper. A page turning. Someone was in the room with her and reading a book.

She rolled her eyes to the left and was surprised by what she saw. She was in a private room, which her city health insurance probably wasn't paying for. Not far from her bed was a small table with two chairs, upon which sat a laptop computer, a pitcher and a coffee cup. Beyond that table was a wall, painted blue, with a window that opened out onto a sunny afternoon, complete with a view of trees. Sitting in a battered but comfortable-looking chair, her feet up in the window, was Alexis Castle. There was a textbook on her lap and a notebook on the arm of the chair into which she scratched the occasional note before turning the page.

Kate felt her brow furrow. Alexis shouldn't be here; she was jeopardizing her spot in the summer program at Princeton. Her mouth was dry, but Kate swallowed a couple times and finally spoke. "Alexis?"

Her voice was softer and rustier than she had expected it be, coming out as little more than a whisper. Alexis didn't move, so she swallowed a couple more times and tried again with a little more success. "Alexis?"

Alexis startled hard. Book, notebook and pen all fell to the floor as she came to her feet in one swift, graceful move, spinning toward Beckett with her eyes huge and wide. "Kate? Oh, my God, Kate, you're awake!" She flew to the side of the bed, grabbing Kate's hand, her face glowing. "I can't believe you're awake!"

"What are you doing here?" Kate asked, her voice still raspy. "You should be in Princeton."

A shadow crossed Alexis's face. "Don't worry about that right now," she said. She stood again, retrieving the pitcher from the table and a plastic cup from a bedside stand Kate hadn't noticed before. She poured a cup of water, then took the bed control and used it to raise Kate into a sitting position. "Here, you sound like you need this."

Kate tried to take the cup, but her hands were clumsy, so Alexis held it for her while she drank. "Thanks," Kate said softly. "I did need that."

Alexis patted her hand. "Let me go get the nurse," she said. "They probably need to come do a bunch of tests. Dad should be back anytime; he just went to get us some lunch."

Kate nodded, watching as Alexis stood again and went out the door. She looked down at her sheet-covered body, surprised to see that she was wearing actual pajamas and not a hospital gown. The lack of pain from her gunshot wounds had been bothering her since she woke up; no pain meant no working nerves, which likely meant paralysis. Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she tried to move her toes.

They moved.

She paused, her brow wrinkling again in confusion. Her toes moved again when she tried, and her feet as well. Her legs felt clumsy and unwieldy, but they too moved when she tried them. She wasn't paralyzed, and she wasn't in a drugged-out haze. So why wasn't she in pain?

Her attention was drawn from her feet by the arrival of a woman in a white coat, clearly a doctor, followed by a man and a woman in scrubs, both clearly nurses. The nurses began taking her vital signs while the doctor took a position at the end of her bed, flipped through the chart for a moment, and then looked up at her and smiled. "Welcome back," she said.

"Um," Kate replied. "Thanks?"

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Kate Beckett," Kate replied. "And yours?"

The doctor smiled. "Maria Capet, M.D., alphabet soup. Just Maria, please. What's your address, Kate?"

"I don't have a permanent address," Kate explained. "My apartment just got blown up. I'm staying in a sublet in the East Village."

The doctor nodded. "And do you remember what happened to you?"

"I was shot," Kate said. "Esposito said something about cop killers; they went through my Kevlar."

The doctor nodded. "That's correct." She took a breath to say something else but was interrupted by noise from the corridor. She and Kate both looked toward the doorway, which was suddenly filled with a tall, sandy-haired man who was staring at her like she was the answer to all his prayers. "Kate," he whispered. "Oh, my God."

"Castle."

He was by her side in an instant, shouldering the nurse aside and grasping her hand. "You're awake," he said, his voice full of wonder as he reached to touch her face with his other hand. "Oh, my God, you're awake, and you know me."

She stared at him in shock. "Castle? What the hell is wrong with you?" She looked at the doctor. "Has he been like this the whole time?"

The doctor's smile was tight and uncomfortable. "He has some reason to be, Kate," she said gently. "He's been pretty worried about you."

Kate's eyes traveled from the doctor to Castle and then back again, and there was suddenly a knot in the pit of her stomach. "What aren't you telling me?"

The doctor took a deep breath, her arms wrapping around Kate's chart as she studied her patient. "You were shot five times at close range. The shooter was using an Uzi which was, as your partner suspected, loaded with armor-penetrating rounds. You underwent extensive surgery to repair the damage to your internal organs, and due to the nature of the damage, the surgeon who did the repairs induced a coma to assist in the healing process."

"Ah." Kate nodded. "That makes sense. How long have I been out, then?"

"Well," the doctor replied, drawing the word out, "that's the thing. When the medication was stopped, you _should_ have gradually woken up over the course of a few hours. But you didn't."

Kate felt the knot in her stomach get larger. She swallowed hard, glancing again at Castle and then back to the doctor. "How long have I been out?"

"You need to understand that this is an unusual situation, and –"

"_How long?_"

"Thirteen months, three weeks, four days." Castle's voice cut across whatever the doctor had been about to say, and Kate stared at him in shock.

"What?"

He repeated himself. When she continued to stare at him, he smiled slightly. "Actually, maybe it's three days. Today doesn't count, because today you're awake."


	2. Chapter 2

_Co-written with WonderTwinC  
_

* * *

_The rain poured down from the slate-grey sky as Erica stood over the body. The blue and red flashing lights made the victim look even more ghastly than usual, and_

Kate sighed, shoving the laptop away, and stood, pacing around her desk and moving to the big plate-glass window in her office. She sighed, leaning her head against the window, and stared out at the night-dark city. She was bored. Absolutely bored.

Everything about Erica Storm had become formulaic; she knew how every scene in every book was going to fall out before she even wrote it, and she was sick and tired of it. She desperately needed something new, something different.

She sighed into the emptiness of her spacious SoHo apartment.

* * *

Laughter filled the small apartment as Rick chased his daughter around the furniture, trying to regain the loss of his last candy bar. They were rounding the couch when his cell phone sounded, catching him off guard and causing him to slam into the arm and then subsequently hit the floor with a groan. He could hear Alexis laughing in the distance before she returned, dangling the offending electronic over his head with a smile. "Here you go, Dad."

"Thank you, darling," he replied, reaching up to take the phone. He didn't even have to look to see who the caller was, it was really too late to be anyone else.

"Castle."

"Yo boss, we got a body. 310 West Broadway," his partner at least had the decency to sound a little apologetic for bothering him, and he nodded his head even though Esposito couldn't see him.

"I'll see you there in twenty," Castle ended the conversation before he snapped his phone shut, turning to look at his daughter. She didn't look upset, instead she leaned down and kissed his cheek before opening the candy bar and taking a bite. A groan escaped him as his head thumped back against the floor as he took a moment to gather himself.

It was just another regular, normal day in the life of Detective Rick Castle.

* * *

She started down the street with a sigh, her fists jammed into the pocket of her hoodie and her earbuds in her ears, the music a little angry and perfectly suiting her mood. She trudged, her shoulders slumped, up Broome Street toward West Broadway. There was a doughnut shop a couple blocks down that had some of the best coffee she'd ever had outside of her own house, and she liked to sit in the shop and people watch. Maybe she could catch a case of inspiration.

Her attention was caught as she turned onto West Broadway by the flashing blue and red lights of the flock of police cars outside the SoHo Grand Hotel, and she slowed her pace as she approached the building, her eager eyes darting around the scene and cataloging what she saw: four marked police cars and two unmarked, a van from the Medical Examiner's office, a flock of people streaming in and out.

Her interest piqued, she slipped around one of the cars and strolled casually up the front steps and into the building.

* * *

"Victim's named Vanessa Jenkins, twenty-eight year old female visiting from New Jersey with her older sister, Jenna Miles," Detective Ryan greeted as Rick stepped onto the scene, pulling his gloves on as he moved around the other personnel on the 2nd floor of the Soho Grand Hotel. He easily spotted the victim lying in her bed and as he approached it was easier to see the blood splattered against most of the surrounding area.

"Cause of death?" he asked, glancing down at the chief medical examiner as she crouched beside the head of their victim. Lanie glanced at Castle before she pointed at the back and left side of the skull with the pen in her hand. "Blunt force trauma to the head. The two wounds indicate that each hit was made with a different weapon, my guess would be the bottom of a lamp for the bigger wound directly at the base of the skull."

There was a nod, and then Castle knelt down near Lanie, examining the wounds and the face of their victim a little more closely, agreeing with lamp theory as he took in the depth and the indention of the more fatal of the two hits. "Time of death?" he questioned with a raised eyebrow, hoping for something.

She waited a moment, glancing down at her chart and then at the body before turning to Castle. "This is just a guess, mind you, but I would say our victim here was murdered about two to three hours ago. I'll know more once I get her back to the lab, but the time frame I'm thinking is between four and six pm."

Well, maybe it wasn't exactly what he was hoping for, but it was close enough. Without moving he fired off his next question. "Any of the guests hear something?"

"Not a thing, bro. There was a dance down in the lobby from three to eight thirty and so far everyone we've talked to says they were either at the dance or out of the hotel."

"Makes sense, I suppose," he mumbled to himself, standing up as he turned to look around the rest of the crime scene.

* * *

She strolled casually down the second floor hallway, making mental notes of everything. A few detectives standing around in cheap suits, a few uniforms bagging up evidence. She couldn't get a good look at the body, so she went down the hall and turned a corner. She counted to thirty slowly before running a hand through her hair and stepping back out, sauntering back down again.

The victim was sprawled out on the bed, facedown, her long blonde hair matted with blood. There were blood spatters on the wall as well, and probably on the floor. Her mind worked quickly, extrapolating the details of the murder, and she took the first left turn in the hallway, pulling a notebook and pen out of her pocket to make several quick notes. Considering, she tucked the items back into her pocket and went back down the hallway a third time.

No one paid any attention to her the first two times, so she moved more slowly this time, shamelessly staring into the room and trying to memorize the details. She wasn't really paying attention to the uniformed officers at the moment, which – in retrospect – was probably why she didn't notice the tall one until he was on her, grabbing her hands and slapping the handcuffs around her wrists.

She gasped as he spun her around, staring up into his eyes in shock. "What?" she managed.

"You seem very interested in our crime scene," the detective replied. "Perhaps you'd care to come to the station with us and discuss it."

* * *

Rick heard a small commotion outside the door of the hotel room and he turned, raising an eyebrow in surprise as he watched one of the uniforms arrest a woman. He crossed the room after a word with Lanie, passing between Ryan and Esposito as he made it out into the hallway.

"Problem, Edwards?"

"Got a person of interest, Castle," Edwards replied. "Seems to think our crime scene's a tourist attraction. She's been by three times at least." He turned, bringing the woman with him, and Castle blinked at the sight.

Kate Beckett. He knew her immediately, even though the only time he'd ever seen her in person before now, she'd been in a business suit and wearing the same professional smile she always had on her book covers. She was dressed now in jeans and a ratty Princeton hoodie, but he'd know those eyes anywhere.

Why the hell would _New York Times_ bestselling author Kate Beckett be strolling up and down the hallway outside their crime scene like a killer coming back to get a look at her handiwork? "Put her in my car, if you don't mind?" he asked Edwards. "I'll be down shortly."

"You got it." The uniform pulled at the woman's arm. "Come with me."

Castle watched them disappear down the hall and into the elevator, and then he shook his head, moving back into the hotel room.

* * *

"Mind explaining why you were walking around outside the crime scene?" Castle dropped the case files down on the table in front of Miss Beckett, raising an eyebrow as he took everything in. She looked… different. She wasn't as put together as she seemed on the back of her books, but he smiled in the end as he sat down across from her. He knew that the boys were watching them behind the mirror, but he didn't mind.

This had to be interesting.

She spread her hands, giving him her best book-signing smile. "I was out for a walk?"

His brows drew together and the smile slid off his face. "Can the crap, Miss Beckett. People are dead, and you were strolling around outside my most recent crime scene like you wished you had a bucket of popcorn. Now, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way; which would you prefer?"

She leaned back in her chair, putting up her hands in surrender. "I really was out for a walk," she said, schooling her own face into earnestness. He was kind of hot when he glared at her like that, not that she'd ever tell him. "I was trying to write and it was... not really working out well, so I was going down to the doughnut shop at the corner of West Broadway and Canal. They're open all night and they have great coffee, so sometimes I go down there when I'm... plotting." _Or stuck._ "When I saw all the commotion at the hotel, I just... got curious."

"So you thought you'd just stroll in and have a look?"

Kate shrugged. "Basically, yeah." Off his incredulous expression she exclaimed, "I'm a writer! It's what I do! Morbid curiosity is a hazard of the profession."


	3. Chapter 3

**_WARNING: Spoilers for "Always"_**

* * *

The alcohol burns its way down his throat as he stares at the photo of her on his phone's screen, and he shudders hard when it hits his stomach.

He will never admit this to anyone, drunk or sober, but he was kind of relieved when Gates took his badge and gun.

He couldn't admit it to Ryan, at least not sober, but he understands why Kevin did what he did. If he hadn't been compromised, he might have done it himself.

Yeah. He takes another shot, and he admits it to himself again. He's compromised.

When it comes to Kate Beckett, he's compromised as hell.

He admitted to himself that he was in love with her years ago, but he has prided himself on maintaining his professional – and personal – distance, even to the point that he practically shoved her into Castle's arms right before that awful summer. But all that professional – and personal – detachment went right out the fucking window when he watched her die.

And since then, he's been as driven as she has.

She said last year that nobody wanted her mom's killer as bad as she does; that's not true any more. Javier Esposito wants him, too. He wants to get his hands on the man and hurt him – _really_ hurt him, the way they taught him to hurt people when he was in Special Forces. And then he wants to watch while he personally separates that man's life from his body.

He's as far down the rabbit hole as Beckett ever was. Because he loves her.

He steps out of the bar into the storm and turns, looking across the corner of Broome Street and up to the lighted set of fourth-floor windows. He watches as a pair of silhouettes merges together to become one, standing there together for a very long time before separating again, one of them drawing the other across the room, away from the storm and into the light.

She's in good hands now – the best. And Javier Esposito, now freed from the constraints of his badge and his partner and his burning need to do what's best for her, fades into the night. It's time now for vengeance.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note: **Though this is essentially a complete one-off, I find it to be completely self-indulgent and not a little fluffy. Therefore it goes here, with headcanons, rather than as a stand-alone story.

* * *

Rick Castle is anxious to get home.

No. Anxious is the wrong word. _Anxious_ implies a worry, some kind of problem, perhaps a fear. He is not anxious.

Say, rather, _eager_. Rick Castle is _eager_ to get home. Because Rick Castle has left at his home his beloved daughter, who is going away soon (not far, but still, _away_), and his girlfriend, without whom he would not know how to breathe. He is eager to get home, because he wants to be with them, to bask in their presence and let them pick on him and tease him and gang up on him and generally make him incredibly happy.

The elevator in his building has never taken so long, he thinks, in his life.

He has been gone all morning. He had to go. He didn't want to, but he had to meet with his publisher and his lawyer and sign papers. Kate wouldn't go, even though he asked her to – something about absence and fondness. He's plenty fond already, but she just laughed and put on lounging clothes and refused to even contemplate the idea of shoes.

The elevator bell dings and he spills out onto his floor and double-times it for his apartment door – and he pauses in the act of inserting his key, hearing the sound of laughter from the other side of the door. Laughter. His daughter and Kate are laughing together.

He pauses, closes his eyes, and leans his forehead against the door briefly, so grateful for what he's got that he can't quite breathe. Then he recovers himself, enters, and takes in the scene.

Alexis is sitting on the couch, holding two long, pointy sticks and a lapful of brightly-colored string, and Kate is behind her, leaning over her, guiding her hands. "Pull the yarn forward," Kate is saying, "and then stick the needle in the front. Then wrap it around and pull it up." She suits action to words, moving slowly, while Alexis watches. Then she moves her hands and Alexis repeats the action, a bit clumsily.

"Like that?" the girl asks.

Kate nods. "Exactly like that. Go again, to the end of the row."

Alexis does so, the tip of her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth as she concentrates. Once or twice, Kate corrects her gently, correcting her hand movements, and soon Alexis's hands are moving steadily in the correct ways as she loops the bright yarn over and over and over.

He clears his throat and they both look up. Alexis grins brightly, holding up the object in her hands. "Dad! Did you know Kate knows how to knit?"

"I did not know," he replies, moving toward them and leaning down to press a warm kiss to Kate's lips.

Kate grins at him. "My grandma taught me when I was four. And another layer peeled."

"You've been knitting since you were four?" he asks, boggling at her.

She nods. "Yep. I can crochet, too, but I like knitting better."

"So, what are you making?" he asks, leaning over Alexis to look at the confusion of yarn in her lap.

"A mess, right now," Alexis replies, smirking. "But eventually, a dishcloth. And if that goes well, maybe a scarf."

"Cool." Castle grins. He nudges Kate. "What are _you_ making?"

Kate laughs. "Currently I'm in the middle of a hat, three pairs of socks, a Fair Isle sweater, a skirt, two scarves and a lace shawl."

He boggles at her. "All of that?"

She grins. "Over time. I've actually been working on the shawl the longest – I cast it on the night I dragged you out of your book launch party to come and be questioned." She leans around the couch and grabs a familiar canvas tote bag. He's seen that bag before – it was at the end of her couch in her old apartment, and he's seen it tucked beside the armchair in her new apartment. Now it's beside the couch in his loft, and he realizes as she reaches into it that it must be her work bag.

She draws out a mass of white fabric – it's light as a spiderweb when she places it in his hands, and when she helps him spread it out, he realizes that it is some of the finest, most detailed lace he's ever seen. Alexis gasps, surging up for a closer look. "Oh my God," she breathes. "That's _gorgeous_."

Kate blushes slightly. "Thanks," she murmurs. She slides onto the couch next to Alexis, pulls a plastic-covered sheet out of the knitting bag and consults it, and then takes the incredibly thin needles in her hands. Castle watches over her shoulder for a minute as she begins to work the shawl, tiny stitches appearing as she works, and then he watches Alexis as she works with the thicker cotton yarn in her own lap. Finally he shakes his head. "It makes my eyes cross watching you," he admits.

Kate laughs. "Then go write."

He leans over her shoulder again to kiss her warmly, and then he follows directions.

* * *

He comes to know that lace shawl incredibly well; she works on it a lot over the summer. She works on other projects as well – she finishes both pairs of socks, the hat, and one of the scarves – but the shawl becomes her go-to project for when she's sitting quietly on the couch in his office while he writes. He finds it there one day, in a little wicker basket, and he lifts it up to have a look. It's long – longer than he is tall – and amazingly intricate. He can't imagine how she has the patience to sit there for hours on end, making those tiny stitches.

But of course she doesn't; he realizes that when he thinks about it. She's constantly having to rip it back because she's missed a stitch, and even when everything is going perfectly, the mental peace that the knitting provides often makes her fall asleep right there on the couch. No wonder it's taking her so long to work on it.

He asks her about it one night in July. He's learning more about knitting from listening to her and Alexis talk about the craft, and from occasionally getting curious and looking things up online. He's learning about Fair Isle and Aran and cable – enough, at least, to recognize what the words mean – and he says, "Is there a special name for those kinds of shawls?"

She raises an eyebrow over her needles. "What do you mean?"

"Is it just a shawl, or is it something special? You know, like a sweater versus a Fair Isle sweater or something."

"Oh." She looks down at the lace, and he suddenly realizes that she is _blushing_. "It... it's called a wedding ring shawl." She swallows hard. "Because when the yarn used to be hand-spun, a mark of the spinner's talent was that a full-size shawl would be fine enough to pass through a wedding ring."

"I see," he says softly. And, for once, he's pretty sure that he does. He grins at her.

She grins back, and goes back to knitting. He goes back to his computer, but he only writes for a few minutes. Then he starts looking for wedding rings.

* * *

Waiting is about the hardest thing he's ever done, but he does. He waits, and he holds onto his secret, and he watches while that shawl gets longer, half-inch by half-inch. Until finally, one night in December, he glances up at a tiny rattle and he realizes that it was the sound of the needles, bare, falling into the basket. He watches as she runs the lace through her hands, searching for flaws, finding none, and smiles when she sits back with it spread across her lap.

He reaches into the drawer and opens the little black velvet box, palming the diamond engagement ring, and comes to sit next to her, lifting one corner of the shawl. "Well," he says softly, "shall we see if it works?" Without waiting for an answer, he draws the corner of the shawl through the ring, pushing it across the lace until it is in her lap.

Her hands only tremble slightly as they drop to the fabric, drawing the shawl the rest of the way through the ring and then holding it in her hands. "Looks like it does," she says simply, her voice only a little shaky. Then she slides the ring onto her finger.

She wears the shawl at their wedding in March.

* * *

He watches, as months pass, different projects go in and out of the bag and the basket (and the other basket at the house in the Hamptons). He watches her make scarves and hats and sweaters and socks – sometimes for herself, sometimes for him, sometimes for others. She makes a full layette with a matching blanket when Jenny gets pregnant for the first time. When it starts to get cold again, she makes him a ridiculous hat with bobbles on the top, and he wears it everywhere. She gives a scarf and a pair of mittens to the doorman. He watches her make all of these projects.

And then one day in mid-February, he realizes that she has a secret project. She's been very casual about it, but it's something that she won't let him see. It hits him one day when he comes in the door and she immediately changes projects, shoving it down into the bottom of the canvas bag.

She's never kept any of her projects secret from him before, not even the ones that were for him.

He doesn't pry. It kills him to wait, but she really, _really_ doesn't like it when he ruins things for her. So he waits.

And one night at the beginning of March, just before their first anniversary, he comes out of the bathroom one night to find her lying on the bed, holding it in her hands. He comes and sits down next to her, and she hands it to him, her eyes shining.

He holds the little green onesie in his hands for a long time, letting his fingers run over and over the incredibly soft yarn, tracing the tiny little rook she picked out in darker green. And then he looks up at her, feeling the tears well up in his eyes. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. Then he slides his hand into her hair and he kisses her like she holds his entire future inside her body.


End file.
